Missouri State University chief sorry band played ‘Dixie’

NAACP complains, school retreats

December 18, 2011

Missouri State University interim president Clif Smart has apologised after the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter complained about the school’s band performing “Dixie” in Springfield, MO. The reason given for the offence is that the song was played at a site where three Black men were lynched more than century ago. Based on this the NAACP complained and Mr Smart immediately bent to their wishes. He says that the school will no longer play the Southern anthem publicly.
The NAACP complaint raises questions. Was the lynching of three men the only thing that ever happened in Springfield, MO? Of course not. Does the song glorify violence against Blacks or anyone else? Certainly not. It celebrates the South, where most Blacks in the United States live. And while the song was adopted by Confederates in the 1860s, it was written before Southern secession and the US war against the South and has remained popular with Southerners to this day. Was the Missouri State University band celebrating the lynching of three men a century ago? Absolutely not. And if “Dixie” conjures up memories of or associations with the lynching of three men in 1906, does “The Star Spangled Banner” conjure up associations with the nuking of a quarter million defenseless civilians in 1945, the US genocide of the Plains Indian nations in the late 1800s or most recently the deaths of one million Iraqis? Two can play this game and if songs are going to be banned because of such associations then the rule should be applied evenly across the board. But of course that will not happen.
The song “Dixie” is the most recognisable Southern anthem. Banning it is an act of cultural intolerance against the Southern people. Considered in light of the bans elsewhere and removals of Southern symbols and statues throughout the South, it smacks of an effort to eradicate Southern identity and culture. In their hay-day, the Marxists enacted similar bans on the symbols, songs and flags of the cultural groups they ruled over in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in an effort to destroy the national identities of their captive populations. Today’s cultural Marxist movement of political-correctness which has swept across the Southern States certainly bears great resemblance to something “Uncle Joe” and his murderous band of communist criminals would have tried back in the USSR. The goal is to eliminate us as a distinct people and culture.